


Innocence died screaming

by Elisexyz



Series: Mental Health Whump Timeless Challenge [7]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e10 Chinatown, Gen, Implied/Referenced Attempted Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-02 15:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18814006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Jiya's stay in Chinatown was only a few weeks long, and Rufus isn't dead. Things are still far from okay.





	Innocence died screaming

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the prompt "Release" in the [Mental Health Whump Challenge by newisalwaysbetter](https://heytheredeann.tumblr.com/post/184648324764/mental-health-whump). I've taken a little piece of canon from the Christmas Special (*collective gasp*), except people actually care about Jiya here, you know. ~~And Rufus is still mad at Wyatt and when he finds out what exactly happened to Jiya in Chinatown he's going to be sooo much more pissed.~~  
>  Title from [here](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/hozier/fromeden.html). 

“Alright, that’s enough for today,” Garcia declares, taking a step back.

Jiya gives him a baffled look before shaking her head, fists raised. “No, come on, I can keep going,” she assures, bouncing on her feet just to highlight how ready she is to take on him again.

They have been at it for more than an hour without pause by now, and it isn’t _that_ long, they’ve had longer training sessions, actually, but Jiya looks a lot like she’s only being kept on her feet by the power of coffee and stubbornness. That manic energy isn’t _healthy_ , and although he’s agreed to give her some self-defence lessons because it is never a bad idea for someone other than him and Wyatt to know what they are doing in combat, it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t noticed that she’s been spending nearly all of her free time exercising, whereas the rest is used to pointedly avoid being alone with Rufus, or Lucy, or anyone else who might ask how she’s doing.

Garcia guesses that she went to him on the assumption that he _wouldn’t_ ask, so he’s about to disappoint her greatly.

“It’s enough for today,” he insists. He could lie and say that’s he’s tired, but it’d probably be too obvious an excuse, and she’d hardly appreciate it. “Take a seat,” he adds, gesturing to the bunch of chairs that they’ve dragged in there while setting up their poor excuse for a gym.

“I’m not tired,” she protests. “I want to train.”

“We’re taking a break.” And if things go his way, it’s going to be a day-long break.

He decides to take a seat first, staring Jiya down until she rolls her eyes and follows suit, if with a sigh of disapproval at the time wasted. She reaches for her bottle of water, pointedly avoiding looking at him as she drinks, and he lets the silence be until she’s done and basically staring at the wall in front of them.

She looks so tired that she seems older, although she only spent a few weeks alone in 1888. Apparently, no one knows exactly what happened, only that she managed to steal the Lifeboat while captive and make a run for it. There’s a gap that she doesn’t want to fill, and Garcia has spent quite a lot of time coming up with very unpleasant but entirely possible scenarios, because he’s a masochistic idiot.

“So,” he finally says. “How are you holding up?”

He’s under no illusion to be her favourite person in the team, far from it, actually, but perhaps that would make it easier for her to get it out. What’s certain is that trying to punch feelings into oblivion tends not to work out too well, as she’s probably starting to notice.

Jiya turns towards him, snorting. “Seriously? You too?” She shakes her head. “I’m _fine_ , Flynn.”

“You sure don’t look like it,” he points out, unimpressed. “You look tired. And you are not talking to anybody, just punching things— or me. Whatever is your problem, punches won’t solve it.”

She snorts. “I feel like this speech coming from you is ironic.”

“It is,” he can only agree. “But it also means that it comes from experience, so. Spit it out.”

“There’s _nothing_ to say.” It’s way too defensive to be a credible lie. “I’m not talking about it because there is nothing to talk about. I’m training just because I don’t want to get kidnapped again, that’s all.”

“Yeah, right,” he mutters. Why did he think that playing therapist would be a good idea again? If Rufus or Lucy couldn’t get it out of her, fat chance that _he_ is going to manage it. “I just thought that maybe you’d feel more comfortable talking about it to someone who doesn’t have half a leg to stand on to judge you. Whatever you did,” he finally explains, and the look on Jiya’s face tells him that his hunch had been right. He recognized that look of haunted guilt on her face pretty fast the first time he saw it.

She clenches her jaw, her eyes locking onto her hands as she plays with the bottle on her lap. He leans back against his chair, drawing in a deep breath, and he waits it out.

He isn’t sure how long it took for her to break the silence, but eventually she murmurs: “I killed two people.”

He turns to her, but she’s still looking down, her lips pressed into a thin line. He doesn’t say anything, thinking that it will be easier for her to go on that way.

“One was Rittenhouse,” she continues then. “I needed to do it, to escape. I wasn’t really thinking, it just— it happened. It didn’t really sink in until after.”

He wasn’t sure that something like that happened, but there was a distinct possibility in his head already. It would have been difficult for her to escape without taking anyone down.

Still, the confirmation makes his stomach twist, because she’s way too young to shoulder this guilt – way too young to fight a war to begin with.

“The other was a—a guy.” She swallows heavily, opening and closing her mouth a couple of times before finding the right words. “In Chinatown, I was alone and I didn’t know how to move around there, I had weird clothes that attracted attention, no money and—and I don’t know, he tried to—to— you know—” She instinctively reaches for a scar on her collarbone, that he caught sight of during their training. She didn’t offer an explanation, and he didn’t ask.

He finds it a little too hard to swallow. “Yeah, I got it,” he says, tightly, trying to resist the urge to get in the Lifeboat and go burn down the entire place just for the hell of it.

She nods once, drawing in a sharp breath and still not looking at him. “I could barely get him off me, and I just— I kept smashing this—this lantern against his head until there was blood everywhere.”

Garcia surely feels no sympathy for the bastard, not even an _ounce_ , but Jiya looks up to him with teary eyes, shrugging helplessly and looking way more broken up about it than the guy deserves.

“That’s it,” she says, her voice thin. “I—I did that. And I know they weren’t good people, but it still feels like—like it was too _easy_ to do, you know?” She takes a quivering breath, shaking her head as her eyes drop for a moment. “And it makes me wonder— what kind of monster am I?”

He swallows, trying to resist the urge to look away as she suddenly looks so _small_ , which somehow feels worse than seeing all the additional weight on her shoulders after they got her back.

He isn’t sure what it is that he could say to make it better, but he does know that she isn’t a monster. She might have done something _bad_ , but he knows monsters, and she isn’t one, not even close. She just rid the world of two scumbags, and when she didn’t have much of a choice either.

“It was survival,” he ends up saying, as she looks up at him with huge, glassy eyes. “It was you or them, you didn’t have much of a choice. I don’t know what the fact that you got out on top makes you, but it certainly isn’t a monster, trust me.”

She quickly wipes away a few tears that fell down when she blinked, and she nods. “If you say so,” she mutters, not utterly convinced but at least a bit relieved.

“You know, I’m sure Rufus would listen,” he says, after a pause. “Lucy too. They want to help, and I doubt they are going to judge you.”

She sighs, crossing her arms tightly. “I don’t want them to see me differently.”

“I hate to break it to you, but we can all see that you are different. They know. If you talk to them, they can help you through it, and understand better.” And then, because she’s staring and she looks like she’s about to burst out crying any minute, he blurts out: “Alright, that would be fifty bucks for the wisdom, cash only.”

It gets a laugh out of her, but it also results in tears rushing down like there’s no tomorrow and quiet sobs breaking up her laughter every ten seconds.

“How much more for a hug?” she sniffles, jokingly, as she tries and fails to wipe her cheeks clean.

“Your silence,” he answers. “I will deny this all the way to my grave anyway.”

“Fair enough.”

She promptly drags her chair closer and wraps her arms around him, tight enough that his breath is cut short for a moment as he embraces her back, resisting the urge to lay a kiss on her head the way he always did when his daughter hugged him, because that might just be a little too much for them both.

“Thanks,” she only says, her voice muffled because of her cheek pressed against his chest.

He nods, rubbing her back comfortingly. “Training’s over for today,” he announces then, jokingly.

She laughs.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates feedback, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 

> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


End file.
